In many communities throughout the country, in recent years, arenas, stadia, sports facilities and convention centers have been constructed which are used to stage indoor athletic, amusement, and special events such as soccer matches, horse shows, musical concerts, basketball and hockey games, circuses, trade shows, expositions, and the like. Arenas of the type referred to herein are normally designed to seat thousands of spectators in tiered seats arranged in an oval or rectangular array around the active or playing floor of the arena.
In a typical arena construction, the active or playing floor is situated at a level, sometimes five to six feet, below the level of the first row of tiered seats circumscribing the arena floor. A vertical wall normally extends upward from the floor to the level of the first row of seats, and this wall encloses and defines the outer edges of the arena floor.
When an event takes place in the arena which uses only a partial portion of the arena floor, such as a basketball game, temporary tiered bleacher-type seats are constructed on the portion of the arena floor extending between the edge of the basketball court and the vertical rising wall located adjacent the lowermost row of permanent seats. These temporary seats extend downward to the arena floor as an apparent extension of the permanent tiers of seats, and provide preferred seating at close-to-playing-floor level for events such as basketball games, gymnastics events, or the like.
However, these arenas also host athletic and other events which occupy the entire floor area of the arena, such as a soccer match, where no seating can be placed beyond the lowermost row of the permanent seats which are located above the vertical wall encircling the playing area. It has been determined that in soccer matches, for example, a fair amount of the action of the game takes place in the corners of the playing field, which corners are out of the line of sight of many spectators due to the fact that the playing floor is located five or six feet below the last row of seats, and the fact that the playing area is surrounded by a five to six foot high wall. As a result, many of the seats in the arena cannot be sold for these events, since the sight lines extending from these seats to the corners of the playing field are obstructed, thereby preventing the occupants of these seats from enjoying some of the more important and exciting action of the game. To provide greater economic benefit to the promoters of the event staged in the arena, it is apparent that the creation of an arena design that will eliminate these blind seats would be most desirable.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a construction for an arena of the type described wherein all seats provide a direct and unobstructed view of substantially all areas of the floor on which an athletic or special event is taking place.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a floor for an arena of the type described, which floor can be selectively elevated or lowered to vary the height of the active surface of the arena relative to the level of seats in the arena.
A further object of the present invention is to construct a floor for an arena which is simultaneously capable of being selectively elevated above the level of a base floor, and of supporting large loads, such as the weight of two complete socce teams moving rapidly across the elevated arena floor.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a construction for a movable arena floor which distributes heavy lifting loads evenly across a broad expanse of floor, while accommodating load transfer to adjacent flooring sections and lifting mechanisms in the case of failure of a lifting mechanism.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for synchronously controlling the elevating and lowering of a heavy arena floor such that all points in the floor are raised or lowered in unison or individually to prevent buckling or cracking of the floor, depending upon varying load factors across the width of the floor.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a novel construction for a plurality of load bearing and transfer elements embedded in a movable arena floor and in an adjacent base floor to enable the movable floor to support substantial loads while in an elevated position.